


Heir Sans Parent

by somnivagrantTraviatus



Series: Headcanons [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Dadster, Gen, Good W. D. Gaster, more headcanony stuff, skeletons' glowing eyes get passed down to the person closest to them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 11:06:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7219891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnivagrantTraviatus/pseuds/somnivagrantTraviatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are only t̶̅h̿̈́ <b>t</b>   r̸̿̾ͭ͒̌͐ͥ̇͜e͆͌̇̐ͨ̓̏͆ <b>w</b>   e̷̽ͦ͗ͩ̃͒̒ <b>o</b> skeletons left. Sans has two impossibly inherited eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sans

The first time Sans thought about glowing eyes was when he was just a baby bones.

He had just been trying to help his father with one of his experiments when the chair he was standing on toppled over. Instead of crashing to the ground, he found himself cocooned in what felt like jelly, or strangely solid air. Shocked, Sans tentatively opened first one eye, then the other, and saw to his surprise that he was floating, held up by a halo of blue.

When his feet touched ground again, Sans rushed over and clung to his father’s legs, bones trembling with shock and excitement. “that was amazing, i didn't know you could do that! do it again! do it again!”

Gaster only sighed, dropping a hand to touch his son on the shoulder, as if to reassure himself that he was still there, before turning back to his work. “I don’t think so, Sans.”

“what? why not?” He tapped on his father’s leg, waiting for the Royal Scientist to turn his attention back towards him before making his eye sockets as big and puppy-dog-like as he could. “pleeeeease? it was so much fun!”

“Maybe for you, little one, but I don't like using that power of mine.”

Sans pouted, but knew his father well enough to know that he wouldn't be getting anything more out of him. _still_ , he thought rebelliously, _if i had an eye like that, i'd use that power for everything._

\---

The second time Sans thought about glowing eyes was when he was woken up in the middle of the night by a creeping feeling in his bones. Not knowing what else to do, he followed the feeling down the hall to his father’s room. It was only when he got there that Sans noticed that the hallway was bluer than usual, lit in fits and starts from some kind of powerfully erratic light source he couldn't see through the closed door.

He cracked the door open, only to be greeted by flickering blue static. At the center of it all was his father, sitting up and clutching his hands to his head, seemingly unaware of the havoc inside his room. Blue light fluttered around his left eye, and he was breathing heavily, rib cage rising and falling with the effort. Everything else in the room rose and fell, too, haloed in blue.

Things were always bad when his father started to breathe.

Sans lifted a trembling hand and put it on his father’s shoulder. Immediately, Gaster’s head snapped around towards him, eye sockets empty in his skull, and Sans pulled his arm back out of fear before allowing it to gingerly settle back down. “hey, relax, it’s just me,” he whispered, and, seeing the light begin to steady and fade, he kept talking. “it's just me, sans. and you're my dad, the best royal scientist ever, and we're here at home, and i'm sorry i'm in your room, but i had a weird dream and then you looked like you were having one too, so i came in here and now here i am.”

His dad laughed at that, a shaky chuckle that still sounded much healthier than the whistled air between his ribs had been. “And here you are,” he agreed.

“hey, you wanna hear a joke?” Sans didn't wait for his father's answer, natural grin already preemptively widening at the thought of the punchline. “i tried to move in with a fungi, but there wasn't mushroom.”

And finally, a real laugh that only made Sans grin even harder. His father lifted a hand and patted him gently on the head with it. “That was such a good joke, I'm tempted to request spore.”

They both grinned at that one. Then Sans spoke up again. “um, dad? your eye was glowing.”

In what seemed to be a reflexive motion, Gaster’s arm flew up and he set a palm over his left eye as if to hide it. Then he sighed. “I know.”

“did you have a bad dream?”

“You could say that.” Gaster reached down and hugged Sans around the shoulders for a long time, then let go. “But enough about my night. You should be getting back to yours.”

“alright, dad. if you're sure.”

“I'm sure,” Gaster replied. With a gentle push, he made his point clear, then settled back down to a lying position. “Goodnight, my skeleson.”

“goodnight, dad.” 

_still_ , Sans thought, on his way back to his room, _if that kind of power comes with the eye, i don't want it._

\---

The third time Sans thought about glowing eyes was when he woke up with one.

He had seen Gaster slip into the Core and come to pieces, literally and figuratively, turning into dust so quickly and yet so slow, all at once, dust drifting gently down into the roiling mass of energy. His father’s scream ringing in his skull, he snapped upright, clutching his shirt over the ribs just to the side of his sternum.

_it was just a dream_ , Sans tried to tell himself. _there's no way that could happen, right? dad’s way too careful for that kind of thing._

Then he noticed that the room was blue, and that he had to turn his head more than he should have in order to make out the blurry shapes of his sparse furniture.

It took a while for his reasoning to catch up with his observations, but slowly, his left arm rose to cover his single, glowing eye ( _just like dad did_ ), and he could no longer deny what he already knew to be true.

His dad was gone. W. D. Gaster, Royal Scientist, was no more.

That Sans had his eye now only cemented that.


	2. Papyrus

The first time Papyrus thought about glowing eyes was the first time he woke up again after having been dead.

He didn't remember much. Just meeting the human, again, and knowing that the rumors couldn't be true. After all, they had been friends once, and there was no way that the Frisk he had known would be dusting monsters left and right like the other monsters said they were. Surely, once they met again, the human would stop this game they were playing, and they could all escape the Underground and have spaghetti and be friends, like they were the first time.

But the joke didn't stop. One swing of the human’s weapon, and he was down, watching almost in shock as he, the Great Papyrus, fell apart into so many motes of dust, and they, the human he had called friend once, moved on without a word.

Then, despite not being alive to remember things, he clearly remembered a sensation of getting a hug from the air, feeling somehow comforted despite there being no one to comfort and no one to be comforted. Then he remembered the sensation of something leaving him, if only because when he woke up the next morning, ages before he had died, he could feel how strange it was to have it back.

Papyrus might not always be quick on the uptake, but after a few resets’ worth of watching blue light stream out from under his brother’s door ( _IT’S NOT POLITE TO PRY, HE’LL COME TO YOU WHEN HE’S READY FOR YOUR HELP_ ) and many more of watching the blue flicker in and out with an orange light that hadn't been there before, a light that pulsed faster every time Papyrus died, it didn't take too many resets to come to the conclusion that the magic he had felt leaving him was an orange eye, passed down to him from someone he couldn't remember.

He had slept, if not soundly, then somewhat more comfortably, for a while after figuring out that one. It only felt right that his eye should have gone to Sans. It wasn't exactly as if there were any other skeletons he could have passed it on to, after all, and even if there had been, he would have chosen Sans to receive it every time. They were brothers. That was what brotherhood meant. And if Papyrus wondered why he never woke up seeing the world in blue, that thought was quickly dismissed. If Sans had died ( _NOT THAT HE WOULD, OF COURSE_ ) in any of the resets they'd lived through, it would have had to have been after Papyrus’s death, when he wouldn't have been able to receive it.

He wondered who got Sans’s eye in those timelines, sometimes.

Then he stopped that train of thought, because obviously, the answer was no one. Sans never died in any of the resets, period, and that's all there was to it.

Still, that didn't answer the question of who had given Papyrus his eye. He decided it was probably the not-person he could feel hugging him sometimes after a death, for convenience’s sake more than anything else, and left it at that.


End file.
